Undone: The Complete Duology, page 23
Tucking my arms against my side to preserve what little warmth I could capture, I started forward again, uncertain which direction I was headed.
Two beams of light sliced through the storm. I stumbled to a halt, shielding my eyes as I peered beyond the headlights.
Directly in front of me, within the swirling, raging storm, stood the outline of the little red sports car.
4
GRACE
Mac certainly had wasted no time holding me to his little compromise.
I didn’t want him to venture into town alone, but I wasn’t willing to go. I didn’t even let that suggestion pass between us. He might have been a compliant partner, but he wasn’t a man to be stopped when he wanted something. Judging by the tone of his voice and rigidness of his body, he’d already set his mind to whatever errand he had in town.
Not that it should matter to me. He could be off on his escapade, but I already had a plan. Nothing was going to get in the way of that, especially now that I had all three elements for my spell and my sacrificial lamb.
Parked in the jeep on the edge of the woods, I reached into the backseat and pulled the tote bag to my lap. As I pawed around the contents—the box with the man-in-the-moon ring, the container with the bones, and the jar of ash—contentment washed over me. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt that kind of peace.
Soon, all of this would be over. I just had to keep everything on track until then. Preventing Mac from finding out about Bobby while making sure Bobby didn’t die wasn’t the easiest endeavor, but everything was moving in the right direction.
I held up the container with the skeleton hand. Strange how it no longer looked like it belonged to Miss Gladys. It could be any old hand from any old grave.
Panic clenched my chest. What if I’d been mistaken? What if one or more of these elements weren’t correct? What if we’d tainted them somehow?
How would I know until I performed the spell? By then, it would be too late.
I returned the container with the hand into the tote bag and held up the jar of ash to inspect it. The ashes seemed fine, despite how I’d raced through the rain with them. They were loose, powdery, just as they should be.
I exchanged the jar for the ring and opened the box. The man-in-the-moon peered up at me, and I pulled the ring from its bed. Despite its age, the ring was in remarkable shape. Hopefully, that would please the goddess.
Hopefully, this was the right moon.
I could be wrong. What if I was wrong?
I sucked in short breaths, clutching the ring in my fist until it dug into my palm.
I’d been so sure when I’d gathered the elements, but hadn’t I been guessing? I had no way to verify what the goddess intended.
My lungs constricted further as I held the ring up between my thumb and finger. What else could the moon on her list have meant?
I rolled the piece of jewelry back and forth, then slipped it on my left ring finger. It slid on and rested snuggly in place.
I let out a relieved sigh as I leaned back in my seat. The ring fit perfectly. That meant something; it was the right ring. It was the right element on my list.
The magic of the ring, of what it symbolized, coursed through me. Not only was it the right ring, but I was meant to wear it. Already it was charging my power, preparing me for the spell to come. That was how it would happen. Each element would make me stronger in some way, and that would allow me to unleash a spell of this magnitude.
The path was clear now.
I kissed the ring still on my finger, then closed the empty box and returned it to the tote bag.
Rain thudded against the windshield. I turned on the wipers before backing onto the road. The storm was only going to get worse. I should use this time while Mac was preoccupied to take care of Bobby.
Outside my house, I let the jeep idle while I grabbed the chair from the basement and tossed it in the back, along with a stack of folded bath towels. I’d run out of blankets. These would have to do. I grabbed water in a gallon jug and a long rubber tube he could use as a straw so I didn’t have to pour the water into his face.
By the time I reached Bobby’s hideout, the rain was coming down in a steady sheet I could barely see through. I shoved open the jeep door and ducking, I scurried for the cave. My shoes splashed in puddles that grew and deepened as I approached. At the entrance of the cave, I found myself up to my ankles.
“Well, fuck.”
“Gracie!” Bobby called over the ripping sounds of the storm.
I pulled away soggy wood and tossed it out of the reach of the pooled water.
Bobby sat in a puddle, drenched from head to toe. His skin was pale with a distinctly purple hue lined with blue veins. The blankets were just sponges at this point, and the fact the flashlight hadn’t gone out, despite being partially submerged, was a miracle.
I threw aside the remainder of the wood, then grabbed one of his arms, still tied behind his back.
“Come on, let’s get you out of there,” I said, cutting the soaked restraints on his legs. I cupped the top of his head so he didn’t bash his skull as he stumbled out of the wet cave. He staggered around before he found his balance and I dared to release my hold on him.
“I need to piss something fierce,” he said.
I paused, mid pulling up the wet blankets, and gave him a disgusted look. “It’s always something with you.”
“Gracie, I’m not kidding.”
“I know, I know.” I looked around, trying to determine how we were going to do this. “Let me get my gun out of the jeep.”
“Dude, it’s mud and slick rocks for miles,” he said, teeth chattering. “You have a jeep. I can barely stay upright.”
“Any other complaints?” I asked, but I was already sawing the ropes at his wrist.
He shook out his arms, and I refused to acknowledge how badly his skin was puckered red and bleeding from the restraints.
I could only do so much.
He tottered forward a few feet then turned away from me and unzipped. As he pissed on the rocks, I kept an eye on him and pulled the blankets and useless tarp from the cave.
When he returned to me, he hunched over against the rain, rubbing his biceps with his hands. Water drained from his hair, and his wet clothes clung to him in an uncomfortable way. I still had no way to get him a new outfit. Mac hadn’t brought any belongings to my house, and even if some of my dad’s old clothes were tucked away in my house, they wouldn’t fit Bobby. He was much larger than my dad. I frowned as I studied him; maybe not as much anymore. He had lost noticeable weight. I wasn’t feeding him nearly enough.
I re-tied his arms before he got too comfortable with the idea of freedom and forgot all his reasons for not running. He didn’t protest, though he did wince when I grazed the wounds in his arms. The bandages had been long lost in one scuffle or another.
“Stay here,” I said with an edge, shaking the restraints a little to prove I meant business.
He winced, twisting away from me. “I will. Jesus, Gracie.”
I retrieved the chair from the jeep. Bobby’s gaze followed me all the way back to the cave.
“Did Mac go to the Feast?” he asked between chattering teeth.
I halted, then sloshed into the cave to position the chair. “Yep.”
“Gracie, you shouldn’t have let—”
“I tried to stop them,” I snapped as I ducked back out of the cave. “It’s not like I have a lot of say around here, if you haven’t noticed. Take a fuckin seat.”
I gestured at the chair.
He clomped through the puddle back into the cave and dropped into the chair. He was still shoe-deep in water, but at least he was up off the ground.
The shivering didn’t subside though. Despite the chills racking my own body, I trudged back to the jeep and grabbed the stack of towels. Shielding them with my jacket, I hurried back to him and placed the stack on his lap.
I plucked the first folded towel off the top. “Lean forward.”
He hesitated, and then tipped his head a little.
“More, more,” I said, then wrapped the towel over his head and rubbed at his wet hair, trying to dry it enough to keep him from getting sick.
He moaned a little, and I slapped his head through the towel. That shut him up.
When I finished with his hair, I tossed the towel to the ground, into the water. It was a lost cause at this point, covered in mud and blood.
He was a mess.
I opened my mouth to promise him food on the next visit. A sound like the sky ripping cut me off, followed by snow dumping from the sky.
“Oh, crap.” I watched out the cave door as the world around us turned white. The jeep faded out of sight.
Two of the elements were still in there.
I charged out the door and freezing air blasted into me. My shoes slipped on the snow and ice, but I stumbled forward, searching for my jeep.
The vehicle was gone.
I turned in a slow circle, trying to make out anything at all, but the world had disappeared in white. Piercing howls filled my head as the storm grew in intensity.
Was Mac still in town? Would anyone help him?
I tried to return to Bobby’s cave, but I had lost all sense of direction. Wind whipped at my eyes until I could barely keep them open. I wish I could just stop the storm, but my magic was the subtle kind. Too subtle for the likes of this.
I stumbled forward, gasping for air.
“Grace?”
Bobby’s voice warbled in the storm.
“Bobby!”
His form appeared in the swirl of snow. His arms were still tied behind him, and he tottered off balance over the snow and ice.
My feet went out from under me. I grabbed his arm to keep from falling. Together, we scurried back towards the cave, heads ducked, breathing heavily. The mouth of the cave came into view when we were almost already on it.
Bobby dropped into the chair, panting. I grabbed the nearest logs and rebuilt part of the wall, but most of the wood was either too wet and fell apart, or they were lost out of sight in the storm. I retreated into the cave and pressed my back into a corner, trying to catch my breath.
“You want to sit?” Bobby nodded towards the chair.
“I’m fine.”
My toes were already numb from the freezing cold water that had seeped through my shoes and socks. Hopefully the storm would pass soon, and I could get back to camp.
That wasn’t usually the case in Thorn Tree, though.
The partial wall did an adequate job at keeping out most of the wind and snow, but we were ankle deep in a cold puddle and had nowhere to move, nowhere to sit besides the chair. Both of our clothes were soaked, though Bobby had been in wet clothes far longer than I had and was looking a little too pale as he continued to shiver and chatter. He put his feet on the chair braces to get them out of the slowly freezing puddle, but his shoes dripped water.
With a groan, I splashed over to him and grabbed one of the still dry towels off the top of the stack on his lap. He scowled as I crouched at his side and grabbed his nearest foot. I wrenched off the wet shoe and peeled off the sock. His breath hitched, and I had to remind myself that for the last week, I had been the stuff of Bobby Bruno’s nightmares. He likely feared what I intended to do.
I wrapped his foot in the dry towel, careful not to let either touch the puddle even though my ass was down in the water now, and frisked the towel over his foot. It would do neither of us any good if he lost a toe and it turned to gangrene while waiting for his date with the sacrifice knife.
Using the chair leg, he worked off his other shoe but he couldn’t get the sock. After I had brought color back to his first foot, I moved to the other.
“I could ask my mom to get you out of here.”
If the gesture had come from anyone else, it might have been nice, perhaps even sweet. From Bobby, it just seemed even more disgusting. Perhaps he was just trying to make nice since I was down here giving him a foot massage.
“They need my apology,” I said, not looking up at him. This was all business. “They need my admission, or they will start to doubt. While I’m here, they’re united against me. If I leave before they get what they want, the seeds will be planted. People will turn on each other. The church can’t have that.”
Bobby didn’t reply, watching me as I traded the towel for another and returned to the first foot to start the process again. I couldn’t exactly strip Bobby and warm all of him, even though that was exactly what he needed, so the warmth from his feet was going to have to work double time. It would have to be enough to keep him well through the next few hours.
“Mostly,” I said to fill the space between us with something besides the noises of the blizzard and the tension of our own personal storm, “they want to break me.”
“Haven’t they already?”
Without any thought, I reached up with one hand and slapped him across the face. I went back to rubbing his foot with the towel.
“They didn’t break me that night and they never will.”
The shock on Bobby’s face wasn’t from the slap. If he felt any guilt at all, I hoped it ate him alive before his inevitable death. It would be a fitting end for Bobby Bruno.
“They should have punished me and Rose, not you,” he said softly, but his words boomed in the cavern.
They were the ones I had waited my entire life to hear, but now that he’d said them, they no longer mattered.
Maybe they never would have.
“Rose did it all to get back at Bethany,” I said, for no reason at all. It just seemed better than letting my thoughts wander. “Jealousy is a terrible beast.”
I switched back to his other foot.
“Rose told me later…” Bobby coughed, though the chattering had subsided a bit. I took that as a sign he might live a little longer. Long enough, anyway. “Rose told me that it was Amelia’s idea.”
I froze, still gripping his foot. In my mind, I saw Amelia and me on the day after a heavy snowstorm. We were nine or ten. The town had a friendly snowman competition, and Amelia and I had teamed up together to build ours. We’d used turnips for ears.
We’d been friends, Amelia and I. All the girls in our age group had played together, had gone to school together, had grown up together. Amelia’s household had been one of my surrogates where I’d often spent the night. I’d been a part of her family, and she a part of mine.
Fifteen years later, I’d stabbed her to death in front of my house.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I whispered. “Amelia is dead.”
Bobby leaned back in his chair, despite the effort it took for him to move these days. “What happened?”
I glanced up at him, letting all my disbelief show through. “I killed her.”
Bobby lowered his head. I could imagine his thoughts. Amelia had been a sister to him. His obsession with Bethany had put him in her proximity most of their lives. I couldn’t imagine what deviousness had led her to betray Bethany like that, encouraging Rose to go to such lengths to win over Bobby.
In some weird way, it had worked. Rose and Bobby were united forever in their crimes.
Did she write songs about him that she never shared with anyone?
I finished with his feet and dropped the second towel on top of the first on his lap, but I couldn’t bring myself to stand. The movement of air would chill me all over again, and I had enough memories icing me from the inside out as it was.
I listened to the storm, let the mourning sounds fill me until it drowned out my own despair, at least for a while.
Then Bobby said: “Before I left for New York, I visited the grave. The one in the woods.”
Rage roared to life through me, catching me on fire as I shot to my feet, flinging water in every direction.
“Fuck you, Bobby.”
He had no right to my pain. I barely claimed it most days.
He did not reply.
I turned and stared out the top of the doorway, where the logs didn’t quite fill. Beyond was the total whiteness of the storm. All of Thorn Tree would be under attack by the weather, and it would last for hours.
Mac stood no chance of making it back to the woods in this. I just wondered where he was.
5
MAC
I stared at the car beyond the headlights as the blizzard bit at my exposed skin. I was not dressed for this weather. I was not prepared to confront the driver of this vehicle either. Whoever they were, they had ransacked Gracie’s house and then convened with the mayor.
None of this boded well for my health.
“Get in!” The voice was muffled by the storm. I couldn’t even positively identify if the speaker was male or female.
My first inclination was to prepare to fight. My second was to run.
The third was to get in the car. The icy pricks of the wind sent stabbing pains through my limbs and face. The driver might possibly kill me. The storm definitely would.
The car honked, the sound reverberating under the roar of the storm. I could barely hear my own thoughts.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I hurried around to the passenger side as fast as the slippery snow and ice allowed. My fingers ached as I touched the car door handle and yanked it open. The heat of the car interior wrapped around me as I ducked inside, and new pains skittered along my skin. I yanked the door shut before I turned to face the driver.
The enormous hood of their bulky jacket was pulled forward, concealing their features. I wasn’t sure I could even discern the real shape of their silhouette, either. With a gloved hand, they shoved the car into reverse then made a careful U-turn before turning down the intersection.
“The tire chains will only do so much,” they said.
My heart lurched into my throat. In the same instance, the distinct scent of an all too familiar perfume tickled my nose.
I stared at the driver—at her—wide eyed, unable to say anything. I had to be hallucinating.
